15th to file their reports with the fec. and that will do it for me this hour. more "meet the press daily" tomorrow. catch my show weekdays 2:00 p.m. here on msnbc. but now i leave you in the very, very capable hands of my good friend ari melber and "the beat." hey, ari. >> hey, katy, thank you so much. we begin tonight with this breaking news in the ukraine widening scandal. new reports tonight on donald trump's collusion scandal hitting now three key figures with attorney general bill barr on defense, secretary of state pompeo caught on this incriminating call, and congressional democrats hitting rudy giuliani with a new subpoena. those are all trump figures obviously on defense as the house intelligence chairman adam schiff is taking the lead on offense in the democrats' multipronged impeachment probe, announcing they are very close to hearing testimony from this star witness, the whistle-blower. >> when do you expect to hear

from the whistle-blower? >> very soon. you know, it will depend probably more on how quickly the director of national intelligence can cleat the security clearance process for the whistle-blower's lawyers. but we're ready to hear from the whistle-blower as soon as that is done. >> as soon as that's done. this matters because unlike the mueller probe, where key witnesses such as don mcgahn were fighting to ever speak to congress, here you have a person heading in, ready to tell all. and meanwhile, there are also these new details emerging about donald trump's secret effort to pressure ukraine into targeting his political rivals. fox news reporting trump lawyer rudy giuliani was not acting alone in these efforts to get dirt on biden and saying trump knew about it. >> two high profile washington lawyers, joe degeneva, who has been a fierce critic of the democratic investigation and his wife victoria toensing were

working. the only person who knows what they were doing is president trump. >> that's quite a bulls-eye coming from fox news. if the names are familiar, that may be because they are also fox knew contributors, and donald trump basically was in discussions to try to get them to be on his mueller defense team with rudy giuliani in that project. so you have here three private lawyers now conducting what amounts to a shadow foreign policy to get political dirt, political favors and maybe abuse of power, all in the name of donald trump's reelection. trump today getting pretty defensive. he says he is trying to find white house the whistle-blower is. >> do you now know who the whistle-blower is, sir? >> well, we're trying to find out about it. we're so low. we have a whistle-blower that reports things that were incorrect. >> the pressure may be getting to some of these senior trump officials. consider we're still in place before any hearings have begun into this that involve them directly, and heading into the weekend, donald trump's envoy to the ukraine resigned. the ap is reporting that people close to the attorney general

who basically are trying to put the word out to distance him from the ukraine scandal, they say mr. barr is, quote, angry over what trump said, apparently not angry enough to take questions on the matter. and there are other developments and angles we're going to get into in the story on tonight's show with some great experts. before i go any further into what we might call some of the details and the weeds, i'm about to turn to my experts and lawmaker now, and i want to present you as we start this new week, and it's not a normal week, with the bigger developments. with have the united states house of representatives barreling forward with what looks like now a full force impeachment probe with these new witnesses and with new subpoenas, and warning any resistance to congress will soon become evidence of impeachment. that's a new level of engagement. i want to get into some of that in a moment. but we also have news tonight that the senate, led by republicans says it will hold a trial of president trump if he is impeached. i repeat, the senate says it will hold a trial of president

trump if he's impeached because the rules require it. and donald trump's own cabinet members do not appear to be yet united publicly. on whether their focus now is in saving the president or saving themselves. as promised, i turn to our experts on these big picture issues from the united states congress, ted lieu, who serves on the judiciary committee, nancy soderbergh, the third ranking official on the national security council during the clinton administration, and nyu law professor melissa murray, who clerked for judge sotomayor. good evening to each of you. professional, i want to begin with you on the law. what does it mean when we see the sitting united states attorney general trying to take a half step away and the secretary of state here caught on that call. are these individuals in your view looking at their own legal liability? >> it would be hard for them not to at this point. i think we have seen other the last couple of months that bill barr has been incredibly close to the president, has almost

functioned as the quasi federal defender for the president in the mueller investigation. the fact that he's taken steps saying he's surprised and angry by the president's association with him in this event suggests that he is stepping back a little. and mike pompeo will also have to think about what this means for him going forward. this presidency looks poised to at least go through the ringer with congress, and i think there are a lot of people who are trying to get out of the way. >> your interpretation of the barr remarks, i'll read them. here they are in the associated press, acontributed to someone close to barr, but they're not his words yet, and maybe that's a very deliberate strategy on his part. it said the person close to him said, quote, barr was surprised and angry to discover he had been lumped in with giuliani. >> well, again, surprised, angry, he is making very clear through his representative or representative making clear on his behalf that he doesn't feel that he should be associated with this conduct that somehow he is above this fray and outside of it. and he wants to make clear about that. again, bill barr is really deeply enmeshed in this, even if

he isn't actually involved because of his role in the department of justice. the whole idea of the whistle-blower escalating this through the department of justice means that if there was obstruction, the doj possibly had a critical role in keeping this from congress and congressional oversight. and that would certainly implicate barr. here we have him taking very strong steps to distance himself from everything that is going on. >> congressman lieu, what do you see important tonight? >> thank you, ari, for your question. you are absolutely correct that the house is going forward with the full force impeachment inquiry, but i do want to note that impeachment is one of the gravest powers of congress, second only to the power to declare war. it should never be our first option. it has to be our last option. so we're going to follow the facts where it may lead. the facts that have already come out are very damning. it shows that the president of the united states was pressuring a foreign power to help his reelection campaign. it's a similar pattern of behavior with russia and similar pattern of behavior with what "the new york times" just reported with now the australian prime minister where trump asked him to go and help work with

bill barr on the origins of the mueller report. >> yeah, and you mentioned that we're also learning from people who have been inside the administration. so for the ambassador, take a listen to a former trump dhs official here just yesterday. >> what the president is referring to there is a debunk conspiracy theory that somehow ukraine, not russia, hacked the democratic emails in 2016 and ukraine might have the dnc server or hillary's email. the details are convoluted. during your time in the white house, you explained that to the president, right? >> i did. it's not only a conspiracy theory, it is completely debunked. >> ambassador, at what point do you see this as going beyond the president's competence where his own people say they tell him something false, he believes it to be true, and gets into the appropriate or the abuse of power that what he believes to

be true or false comes second to him trying to abuse basically the power of his office to go after biden or anyone else for his own reelection? >> i think one of the key challenges that the president has is he's never been in government, and he fundamentally lacks the understanding of the fact that the vast majority of people who work in government are actually patriots. they believe in the system. they believe in doing right from wrong. and i worked in government for decades. i didn't know who half the career people's political party was. you just don't ask that. and so what the president doesn't understand and i would say a warning to all of the people who are getting caught up in this, the truth will come out. it is simply not possible to hide things from the public. there are too many people involved, and everything will come out to the extent it's always the cover-up. don't engage in this cover-up. come forward, tell the truth, and stop enabling the president, who is trying to literally hire outside people to do his

bidding. >> and what does that tell you? there are many people who argue the president's powers are at their peak in dealing with foreign affairs, in dealing with other countries? >> the president is very powerful in foreign policy, but not all powerful. the congress has a role. the judicial has a role. our judges have a role. and ultimately, the facts have a role here, and they will come out. and i would just reiterate, having sat in on hundreds of those phone calls, it's not surprising to me that secretary pompeo is now known to have been on that call as well. >> should he have done something? >> well, he shouldn't have hidden yesterday when he was on all the morning talk shows. but it's also going to raise a question of what was the role in holding up this aid to our ally that president trump rightly increased the aid to defend ukraine against the russians, and now it's held up. why? who was involved in that? and when you're a president of the united states, the government supports you, but it also will stand up to you when they feel there is wrongdoing. and that's what we're going to

see more and more. again, i would reit rate, do not engage in the cover-up. because it will fail. >> do you believe this is a scandal about donald trump and whether he is abusing his office, or do you view this now and the committees you are working with view this as something where really, the people in charge of the justice department and the state department, these are some of the most important -- i mean, these are the top of line of succession, some of the most important office holders in the federal government. do you view them as potentially crossing lines where they should no longer hold these posts? >> yes, it's about the president of the united states abusing the power of the presidency to leverage foreign governments to help his political interests and get dirt on his political opponent, and it's also about a massive cover-up of different officials who wanted to put his transcript into the secret lockdown servers who didn't want the public to have access to

this information. and we're going see if this cover-up continues because we've just issued subpoenas to giuliani, to other officials, and if they don't provide information, the american people will know they're continuing to hide information from congress and the american people. and we want the truth to come out, and it's going to show some very bad things that the president and his officials engaged in. >> if those folks resist, does that become an article of impeachment? >> it absolutely could. obstruction of congress could be article impeachment. we're going to see based on what comes out the next few weeks. we'll make a decision based on that, based on how much information the administration provides. >> the other thing i want to ask you while i have you, congressman, we and our viewers have heard from you throughout the mueller probe which uncovered crime, but also did not involve bob mueller indicting anyone under election conspiracy. i emphasize toe my viewer as the probe was wrapping up before we read the mueller report, it did not appear it was heading that way, with conspiracy indictments, which doesn't mean people didn't do things that

voters can decide to reward or punish or have concerns about, but it didn't cross that line. i wonder now that the speaker, who of course calls a lot of the shots in your party has said this time is different. do you see and can you articulate a difference between whatever was in that russia ballpark last time and what happened here where it does appear that there is stronger evidence than what mueller had on russia that the president is asking other countries to help him take out rivals. do you see it as worse or would you put it differently? >> wonder that we didn't have bill barr come in with a completely misleading memo that really misdirected the american people about what was in the mueller report. in this case you have american people reading these documents about the same time members of congress are. so everyone has read the summarized transcript of what the president actually said. that's not hearsay. we saw the's own words. he literally said he wanted a favor from the ukrainian president. >> aside from criticizing mr.

barr, is this, in your view, worst based on the evidence? whatever happened in the trump tower meeting, it wasn't a government meeting. there was no transcript. no one may ever know other than its members. here there is more evidence. do you see this evidence as worse or you wouldn't go that far? >> it's worse in the sense we have more evidence. we have the clear complaint and undisputed fax. no one disputes that donald trump halted military aid to ukraine and a week later he has this phone call where he solicits the favor. >> very interesting. real expertise. i thank each of you congressman lieu, ambassador soderbergh and professor here with us in new york. thank you. there will be a trial of trump if there is an impeachment. neal katyal is here. how trump and his allies may be fumbling their defense of this big battle. and ignoring the jared and ivanka email abuse while reviving a probe into clinton's email at state.

but first, this other breaking news tonight. giuliani hit with a subpoena, and look at these two experts that know him so well. i'm joined by sdny prosecutor maya wiley, and come on over, the man who ran to succeed rudy in new york, mark green. nice to see you both. o see you h we get it. it's just the way things are. when you're under pressure to get the job done, it seems you have to accept the fact that some equipment will sit idle, or underutilized. but it doesn't have to be that way. that's why united rentals is combining equipment, data, safety and expertise to help your worksite perform better. united rentals. a better worksite is here. pain happens. saturdays happen. aleve it. aleve is proven better on pain than tylenol. when pain happens, aleve it. all day strong.

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breaking news tonight. the man name checked in the whistle-blower complaint more than anyone else, rudy giuliani, has just been hit with a subpoena. donald trump's personal lawyer

here is facing severe pressure from congressional democrats. they want all of his documents regarding the ukraine by october 15th. now as of this weekend, giuliani was going back and forth over whether he would cooperate with exactly this kind of request. as prompted, i want to turn directly to two very special experts. maya wiley was counsel to the mayor of new york and a civil prosecutor at sdny, an office rudy giuliani used to run. and another giuliani expert, former new york city public advocate mark green. he sued the mayor and also ran to succeed giuliani in a bid for the mayor of new york city, all the way back, you see right there in 2001. good evening to both of you. >> ari. >> good evening. >> quite the experts for rudy giuliani. what does it mean that the house is now subpoenaing him and saying if he doesn't comply, that's evidence for impeachment? >> well, since we know there is a smoking gun document, just the call summary itself of the

summary of ukraine is its own smoking gun. but also there is giuliani's own public statement which essentially was yes, i was going to ukraine to do exactly what the call notes say i was going to do. so for him not to come forward to congress, of course congress needs to see his documents. there is no surprise about them asking for the documents and the subpoena. but, look, what we know is this is an administration and its allies who have worked very hard to stop the clock, to slow things down, and to not cooperate and obstruct congress. so their expectation has to be that he will, as he has said publicly, flip-flop and decide whether or not he's going to -- i think he is in trouble. i think he knows it. and i think he's going to do everything in his power to slow-walk this at best and delay, and i think the democrats are going to have to be prepared to just flow forward very aggressively. >> you know this man.

you've tangled with him. sometimes he wins big. sometimes he loses big. is this the same man that you tangled with years ago? what do you make of the way he seems right now to be losing and complicating life for his supposed client list? >> few of us change his age our age. he is the same guy. his modus operandi now and then is either you love him or he hates you. so he and donald trump get along very well. then he was -- he is a smart trump, but even then he was kind of cocky disassembler, pushing the edge of the envelope. and now he's flown too close to the sun with wings of wax, and he's going to have to testify. if he is deposed, he'll have to do it probably privately. adam schiff is a lot of things, but he is not dumb. and to have this guy who has gone from the mayor of america to the joker, the way he's on

television, he is no ari berman. he does this. he -- i have no idea what's going on. the house doesn't want that. they don't want a reprise of corey lewandowski. so he'll be questioned privately. >> do you think giuliani knows what he's doing? or do you think he has sort of lost the thread of what this is about? >> he's a moth drawn to fame. and so he loves being -- he is back, he is on television, but he still has a brain, and he knows it's one thing to s chris cuomo on cnn when he said the opposite thing maybe three seconds apart, which is a record even for a trump person, but under oath, he is going to have to hire a real lawyer this time. he is going to have to lawyer up. and i don't mean a tv lawyer like him, but someone who will tell him exactly his liabilities to the extent that he is so grandiose that he doesn't understand it. but i think he does. >> to mark's point, maya, rudy

has obviously acted in a way that has made himself more central, more relevant. there is wide reporting he actually wanted to be secretary of state. now he is doing the off the book stuff, whether it's legal or not, whether it's impeachable or not, others will decide. here he was yesterday talking about this very news that hit him tonight. what do you do if you get subpoenaed? take a look. >> are you going to cooperate with the house intelligence committee? that. >> is a question that has a lot of a lot of implications. i wouldn't cooperate with adam schiff. i think adam schiff should be removed. >> that's your answer? >> i didn't say that. i said i will consider it. >> you said you wouldn't do it. you said you won't cooperate with adam schiff. >> i will consider it. i said i will consider it. >> to get into the substance of this, if they already admitted they wanted a foreign government to help donald trump's reelection to go after rivals, and rudy has admitted and said hey, i went out and did it, what exactly is the substantive or messaging benefit to then running and hiding at this juncture?

>> delay, delay, obfuscation, hiding the fax. remember, everything we've seen in the press up to now has fundamentally been let's say that the whistle-blower is not credible. let's say that they changed the form that the whistle-blower -- let's say and fill in the blank. it's everything but the facts that we know that are already out in public and that they themselves have admitted. so all that leaves him, all that leaves him is bluster. >> right. >> and i think to mark's point, all he can do is try to be hard in public as if he is outraged. but he just can't hide. you can run, but you can't hide. >> you can run but you can't hide. mark, you can't shied flooid the comedians either. rudy being back n the spotlight means at the "snl" debut, which is a a lot of americans watch. people who don't follow the news get their mood from this. this show it went down on "snl" for rudy. >> nobody is going to find out

about our illegal side dealings with the ukraine. >> good. >> or how we tried to cover up those side dealings. >> great. >> or how we planned to cover up the cover up. >> rudy, rudy, where are you right now? >> i'm on cnn right now. let me put you on speaker. >> rudy, get out of there, and whatever you do, stay off the phone. >> i know things look bad right now, but i got our top guy on. this. >> good. well, let's get him on the phone too. >> hello! >> damn it, rudy! >> rudy may have been able to bluff with the incumbent president and robert mueller, and the trump people prevailed. he never testified so he could say oh, there is nothing. giuliani is a civilian. he is not donald trump in the white house, and the house impeachment process is not robert mueller who was predestined not to indict because of the doj rule. and also, the trump people said

oh, you can't indict us. junior said i didn't really understand campaign finance law. well, giuliani does, and already two republican prosecutors at the doj with giuliani, bruce fine and jeff harris, who was his chief of staff have said he's vulnerable to prosecution because he clearly tried to get something of value, whether it's an exchange or not doesn't really much matter, because they saw something of value from a foreign national. >> right. >> which is per se illegal. >> and that goes to the smarter lawyers, which include now attorney general bill barr as we've been reporting tonight, seem to be looking for more distance, which ultimately raises the question of whether they'll spend less time in green rooms and more time in law office prepping depositions. mark green, thank you so much. maya, stay with me. i want to turn now to some of the other confusion in donald trump's strategies as he faced the impeachment probe. we're going to be back with a special report on that in 30 seconds. conds.

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ukraine thought the prosecutor was not prosecuting corruption. >> president trump relies i would like you to do us a favor, though. >> you just added another word. >> no. >> you said i'd like you to do a favor, though? >> yes. it's in the white house transcript. >> when having the transcript the white house put out and read back to you counts as a hard question, you might be in a hard spot. that was a top ranking republican in the house kevin mccarthy. those words as mentioned for a factual background, they come from the trump white house. other trump supporters also finding ways to get tripped up. >> why did he use three private lawyers to get information on biden from the -- from the ukrainian government rather than go through all of the agencies of his government? >> two different points. number one -- >> answer my question. >> john durham, as you know -- >> wait a minute. john durham is investigating something completely different. steven, i'm asking you a direct question. why did the president use

private attorneys rather than go to the state department? if you don't know, that's an acceptable answer. >> that is why these exchanges are looking like on nonpartisan media, on journalistic inquisitions and whatever you want to call what is sometimes a friendly path over at fox news. this is how it's playing. today you have donald trump calling for the arrest of a member of the united states congress who, guess what, is probing the white house, adam schiff, and breaking out the word "treason." also retweeting warnings about a potential, quote, civil war, that's a reference to civil war by the sitting president if he were to be impeached. that's a step too far for one republican lawmaker who says that comment is now repugnant. the trump strategy is clearly a mix. there are trump aides who are frying to do the usual thing of attacking any information they get and finding out oh, that information came from them. it's the transcript. then there are these ways of dialing it up and talking about

treason, as if that is going to make you look more innocent. now, look, this ukrainian investigation, it already has produced what the russia probe maybe did not. clear evidence from inside the white house of the president's acts, and maybe that is why this one is so much harder to spit. now we are back with donald trump's allies. i want to bring in john nichols, national affairs correspondent for "the nation" magazine, and back with us, former prosecutor maya wiley. john, i turn to you as someone who's followed many of these things with an eye to the facts and not the way washington usually works. how do you think these facts are playing out in the real world with real people getting some sense, we just showed some of the clips that maybe this time is different? >> i think this time is different. and one of the things that i think a lot of people in the trump circle dent quite understand, because many of theme are frankly very inexperienced with washington,

and frankly unexperienced with a lot of governing issues, that is that impeachment is different. people do understand it. if they're of a certain age, they may even remember nixon. if they're a bit younger, they will remember obviously clinton. and at the very least, they really did learn it in their civics class. i can only tell you that i have a 15-year-old daughter who is in ap civics right now, and impeachment is a really big part of what folks learn of the constitution. so this is a subject that people can focus in on and they can quickly wrap their head around. and the information that has been coming out has been damning toward the president. it is possible if the president had seen this coming a little better and if the white house had developed a really good war room on this that they might have been able to have some countermessaging. but at this point, ari, i can tell you as somebody who coffered the clinton impeachment

and who has been around a lot of these things, i am amazed at their inability to develop a clear line to counter what they're getting hit with. >> well, that's what we've seen in our reporting. and i make it as point, as you may know, to have all people on. and we had a trump campaign official on last week, and marc lotter, and he is welcome to come back. he started the interview by denying there was an effort to go after biden. at the end of the interview he said yeah, maybe there was an effort, and if biden did something wrong, that's okay. it shows the substantive problem which is why would you need a foreign government to do that in exchange for aid? the whole thing doesn't wear well. with that in mind, john, also take a look at another exchange here on "60 minutes." >> you say the president has done nothing wrong. i take that to mean you find it appropriate that the president asked mr. zelensky for an investigation of his democratic rivals?

>> the question before the house of representatives is to impeach the president based upon a phone call that the speaker never even heard. >> mr. leader, with great respect to you, and i apologize for interrupting, but these are the white house talking points that were emailed to the congress earlier this week. >> i've never seen one talking point from the white house. >> john? >> it's tragic, to be honest. and i have to be honest with you. i'm not sure that kevin mccarthy was up for this. he is somebody, as you'll recall, has kind of fallen into the speakership. would paul ryan have been better prepared? perhaps. would someone else have been better? but at the end of the day, this is the key element of it. they seem to believe that they can go on argumentative, that they can just have a fight about this and quibble about words, claim they have never seen talking points, which is an

absurdity, rather than actually going to the heart of it. and to go to the heart of it, you have to understand what is at stake here, and i guess i would just sum it up in the simplest of ways. if you understand what the founders were thinking about when they wrote an impeachment power into the constitution, they were coming off a revolutionary war against a very powerful king. they wanted to make sure that the president of the united states and the people in the executive branch were not fooling around with other governments in secret ways that might undermine this new american experiment. and so i think what they need to understand is they're talking about core premises of why impeachment exists. >> yeah. >> and they keep stumbling into it. >> yeah, maya? >> i agree with john. i will say that i don't even think you need to be a 15-year-old in a civics class to understand that there is no

narrative you can spin here when you have a smoking gun. that's what's different here from robert mueller. robert mueller was complicated. but let's also remember that here we have a president who was individual 1 in a filing, in a federal filing when his then attorney michael cohen was pleading guilty, including hush money payments. this is the same behavior that robert mueller actually pointed to also in terms of obstruction of justice where he found substantial evidence. one of the problems this administration has is this is a pattern of behavior. they were saved by complexity. this one is more simple. but you can't spin a black and white fact. and that's why they're struggling right now. >> i think you put that very well. and both of you, john and maya are speaking to something that is perhaps a note of optimism here, which is when the public

focuses in to use the term john mentioned earlier, it becomes harder to say up is down and the sky isn't blue. and that's a truth baseline that makes the ultimate adjudication of this whether the house and senate will get involved, we don't know yet. but that points towards saying let's deal with the facts we learned not a polarized debate that is fact-free which the people who benefit from that is usually the liars. john, maya, i thank you both. i appreciate you. >> thank you. we're going fit in a break. ahead critics saying it is another abuse of power. right now reviving the clinton email probe. what? but first, this is big news today, and boy, you're going to want to hear it. mitch mcconnell says if there is an impeachment of donald trump, he must hold a trial in the senate. i'm going get into that and a lot more with former acting solicitor general, friend of the show neal katyal, live from london when we come back. ♪ ♪ this simple banana peel represents a bold idea:

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members of congress are unusually busy right now for the beginning of a recess. the house intel issuing subpoenas, working on hearings about trump's ukraine scandal while senate majority leader mitch mcconnell emerged today, interesting, to address the very real prospect the house could ultimately impeach the president and to tamp down any speculation that mcconnell might try to have the senate refuse to hold any trial after a potential trump impeachment. >> what does happen in the senate if the house does get through with this inquiry and decide that they are going to impeach president trump? >> well, under the senate rules, we're required to take it up if the house does go down that path, and we'll follow the senate rules. >> follow the rules. that would be bad news for any trump allies who might have hoped mcconnell would try to find a way to protect trump from the senate trial if it occurred. now, there is a very rare and

momentous thing we're talking about here. it's a scene that captivates the nation when you have an intense debate on the propriety and criminality of a sitting president. >> the sergeant of arms will make the proclamation. >> hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, all persons are commanded to keep silent on pain of imprisonment while the senate of the united states is sitting for the trial of the articles of impeachment exhibited by the house of representatives against william jefferson clinton, president of the united states. >> that's what it looks like. mcconnell making news by saying that kind of trial is unavoidable if the house impeaches president trump. now here's your fact check. he is mostly correct. the constitution doesn't provide a technical schedule for this trial, but it does state the senate is required to hold a trial. quote, the senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments.

that's key because "shall" is simply a legal command requiring action, meaning the senate must hold trials after impeachments. and that's what's happened in the two times in the whole history of our country when the house has ever gone down that road and solemnly impeached the president. in the cases of clinton and johnson, the senate did hold trials for them, and both cases involved them being acquitted. as for mcconnell's reference for the rules, the senate maintain asset of rules for these type of impeachment rules. they were updated last in 1986. and they do provide a schedule for mandatory impeachment, noting even in the event, the senate fails to sit as scheduled for consideration of articles of impeachment, it can go ahead and adopt an order fixing the time for resuming such consideration. so it's not just mitch mcconnell saying it. we're showing you the rules here that support him being right. and we also reached out today to

senate leadership here at "the beat," and senate republican aide said yes, a trial must be held under the rules noting impeachment requires when it happens that those articles hit the senate floor where they can be voted on or dismissed. now what do all these rules call for, and what is it like when you have a chief justice of the supreme court presiding over the trial of the president? well, with me now for our opening argument series, former acting solicitor general neal katyal, who has argued dozens of cases before the supreme court. good day, sir. >> good day. >> let's start with what mcconnell said and what we think the rules have generally provided for. is he right? >> so i think many people expected this guy, mcconnell, to say something else, because, remember, this is the same guy, who already held up merrick garland's confirmation as a justice of the supreme court, an unprecedented thing that had never happened before in our history for not even giving this guy a hearing, merrick garland a

hearing. i think what he did today was remarkable. it was actually up and up and right. he is saying the senate rules require it. i think there could be a debate about whether that constitutional text and the word "shall" requires a trial. but i'm glad to see mcconnell has decided on the idea that you've got to have a trial, because i think every single minute, frankly, or half hour we're seeing something new about donald trump. and, you know, that's going to be the stuff in the trial, and it's going to be pretty darn devastating for president trump. >> well, and you mentioned, this is all the news he's driving. congress on recess, but mcconnell getting out there. he's got his reasons. take a little more of a look at what he said. >> it's a senate rule related to impeachment that would take 67 votes to change. so i would have no choice but to take it up. how long you're on it is a whole different matter, but i would have no choice but to take it

up. >> we know the president does his procedural and legal learning more through the television than any other means. so donald trump may be learning along with others today that that's mcconnell's position. what does that mean for what it looks like if the house does impeach, at this point there is a majority of votes for this impeachment probe. if they impeach the president, walk us through what we know that look likes when it hits the senate floor, and how do you think that might change something that so far has had americans largely, although there has been some shifts, but largely divided? >> so first let me talk about what it looks like in terms of mcconnell, because thing is very bad news for trump. mcconnell could have played the same games he played about merrick garland. i don't have to have a trial and so on. there is some ambiguity he'll find in the senate rule, you know. it can be tangentious about the law. the fact he didn't do that like last week's vote about saying the whistle-blower report has to

be turned over, people didn't expect mcconnell to support that senate resolution, but he did. both of those together to me suggest he is really distancing himself from trump, and that's a pretty remarkable thing, because during the whole mueller investigation, we never saw that. now with respect to what the trial would look like, first you'd have the house, it would have to vote up articles of impeachment. and those look very much like a criminal indictment. like article i, the president obstructed justice because of x or y, or here article i would be abuse of power. the president put his interests above the foreign policy of the united states. it would then go to the senate for a trial. and that trial looks very much in many ways like your standard trial that you -- that you see in the courtrooms all the time. there is one big difference, of course. the constitution says the chief justice of the united states is going to preside over it. and there will be evidence taken and witnesses and trump might testify or not. but in those respects, it will

look and mirror very much what we're used to in seeing trials. >> fascinating. we're talking about john robs making that trip across the street. the last thing i want to ask you about is something that, you know, we didn't make it this way here in the newsroom. you didn't make it this way over at your law office. but lawyers are again front and center in ways good, bad, and in between. tonight rudy giuliani, the president's lawyer, sometimes lawyer, sometimes fixer, sometimes doing things that are obviously not legal work hit with subpoenas. other fox news analysts who primarily say that they are lawyers and were doing potential legal work, they claim for the president, exposed by fox news is also being a part of this effort to go after biden. walk us through what it means that we have so many lawyers in the mix and whether they can avail themselves of legal protections as they are demanded to provide evidence on what you've just outlined could be an impeachment trial. >> yeah, this is some of the scariest news for trump, ari.

there are two sets of lawyers. one is rudy giuliani, and giuliani has said i wasn't acting as a lawyer during a lot of this stuff. and he's obviously got emails and documents, text messages and the like, and it's going to be very hard for him to assert attorney-client privilege when he himself said i wasn't acting as a lawyer. so i do think the house of representatives is ultimately going to get automatic that stuff. there isn't going to be an effective privilege that giuliani is going to be able to assert over the bulk of it. then there are two other people, the geneva and toensing. and both of them, this is according to fox news yesterday, both of them actually declined to be trump's lawyer, and instead served as some sort of secret back office conduit for information or something like that. but they said we couldn't be his lawyer, according to the fox story, because we had a conflict of interest with other stuff involving trump. given that they're either, a, acting as a lawyer and doing

something that would get them in a lot of trouble with the disciplinary and ethics and bar associations, or b, far more likely they weren't acting as lawyers. >> i'm running over on time. i want to make sure we hit that point. if their prior position is we can't be his lawyer for these reasons, now they're going and doing this stuff, which the congress says might be evidence of impeachment, and they happen to be lawyers, but this is like they got, you know, an uber contractor a task rabbit and they're helping you hang a picture, they don't get to hide behind the fact they also otherwise are lawyers. >> exactly. they're task rabbit nonlawyers a this point. and any assertion of privilege, they're going lose. one would expect again they're going to have emails, documents, and all sorts of stuff that is going to be super interesting to the house judiciary and intelligence communiittees. >> fascinating. neal katyal, thank you for making time for us. >> and one last thing. >> yes, sir? >> one last thing, ari. if they destroyed the documents now or something like that, that would open them up to obstruction of justice and other

things. this is going to become a very sensitive part of the investigation. >> all very well put, looking around the corners. neal katyal, thank you. i'll invite everyone you can go to msnbc.com/openingarguments to see this and neal's other breakdowns. he has been tracking a lot of the key parts of this story. fitting in a break, but when we come back, news we have not hit yet because the hour has been so busy. ivanka, jared, personal emails, hypocrisy. critics say another abuse of power. we'll tet you what you need to know when we come back.

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trump's secretary of state mike pompeo facing new revelations he was on the infamous phone call between trump and the ukrainian president. and now trying to turn the tables on this suspicious time of intensity of a clinton email probe. it's either reopening, "the washington post" is posting hundreds of contacts in the past couple of weeks about a matter long since closed. one investigator said something strange is going on and another said the goal is to tarnish democratic foreign policy people. pompeo, for his part, declined to take questions about it today while he was pressed by nbc's andrea mitchell. >> why target routine emails of democratic diplomats?

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this week has started off busy, and tomorrow probably no exception. michael moore will join me on "the beat." we will get into everything, including what the outspoken liberal thinks is the right way to take on trump and this impeachment debate that's kicking up. also, my interview with john

kiriakou, a former cia whistle-blower and quite relevant thinking how this story evolves from here. that does it for us now. right now it's "hardball with chris matthews." all the president's money. let's play "hardball." good evening, i'm chris matthews in washington. we have breaking news tonight on impeachment. "the wall street journal" is now rrting secretary of state mike pompeo was among the trump officials listening in on that july phone call when the president pushed ukrainian president zelensky to dig up dirt on joe biden. that's according to sign yor state department official. though nbc news has not spoken to the official cited in the story, even t